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March 31, 2008
Hola, mis hormigas!
Hello and welcome to all except Tom on MySpace who claims to be my (bendy fingers) "FRIEND," but never answers my email about what MySpace is for, exactly, or what kind of mood I have to be in to use the term "crunk" to describe it, and that the little headline quote next to my picture that said "Suffering from Electile Dysfunction" was satire and not spam. But all the rest ... welcome!
California shows coming up pronto in Atascadero, Oak Park, Lancaster and Pleasant Hill. Those within striking distance are excused from reading the rest of this newsletter and can take their hall passes directly to the gig listings below.
My first solo tour - three and a half weeks in South America (FL, GA, SC. NC & TN) - exceeded all expectations on every front. It was truly terrific in every way. Well, come to think of it, there was just a bit of a SNAFU at the outset, I suppose, landing in Tampa and - as so many of us Democrats have done - dodging bullets on the run from the tarmac to the rent-a-car counter, but it really was all smooth sailing after that.
Come to think of it, it was at the rental counter that a beautiful relationship started. Oh sure, I could have waited an hour to have the freshly-returned car hosed down and vacuumed, I guess. But then I could never have dubbed it The Great Unwashed, which I did. Besides, I was itching to start this big adventure. (Between the circus and the band, I've spent fully a third of my adult life on the road, but none of it where there was a Committee Of Precisely One to consult for all decisions regarding, well ... everything. You can well imagine the sense of anticipation.)
But clean or dirty, the mighty Chevy Cobalt has never been what anybody would call a chick magnet. Not even guys who have zero sense of what turns a woman's head* would have chosen this car for that application. That spoiler back there on the trunk fools precisely nobody, and is, I'm convinced - along with faux-mag wheels and cocoa mats - an item found on the "Cruel Joke" list of dealer talk-ups for a car that - let;s face it - tops out at 70mph and sounds like a sewing machine doing it.
The Great Unwashed had a bit more ... ummm .... personality than I'd counted on, that's for sure. At precisely 57 mph that car rattled like a carnival ride. And the radio would only play The Bill O'Reilly Factor. But as these things so often go, after almost a month together we had bonded big-time.
Wait, now ... let me take that back. I have to admit that I'm not sure if I bonded more with the car itself or with the yellow dog who occupied the car and occupied it for - i can only assume - every minute of every day of the 24,000 miles of the car's entire life before it came into my custody. And come to think of it, I might well be assuming too much about the dog. I can state categorically that it was a yellow dog when it first got in the car, but I can't say for sure whether or not it had any hair of any color by the time it moved out and I moved in. Maybe it was a huge dog with hair to spare. But maybe it wasn't. What I can tell you is that when I got it there was enough dog hair in that car to have crotcheted a perfectly respectable pomeranian. It's ghastly to think of any animal shedding every bit of hair it ever had, but that's the image that persisted, I'm afraid. As for what caused the shedding ... who can say? Maybe the driver drove all the time at 57mph. Or maybe it was Bill O'Reilly.
But the human spirit being what it is, well, when the going gets tough, the tough get duct tape. And compadres, after that first week I had gotten mighty speedy at making bog ol' duct tape mittens and patting myself down before every remotely-critical departure from the T-GU, as I came to call it. I could have gotten away with a much higher ADHQ (Ambient Dog Hair Quotient) had I not brought along just one kind-of-dressy sport coat, and had it not been navy blue moleskin. By the time I had rolled up from Florida to Georgia that sport coat had absorbed enough yellow hair that I though I might be able to scratch big blocky letters into the surface with the ignition key and sell the idea that I was actually an alumnus of say, Notre Dame or maybe Michigan State. Luckily, I was advised by a good buddy that sporting any team colors but red and black would be - shall we say - imprudent in the extreme. Them Georgia folks is serious about football. bought another giant roll of duct tape instead.
One last thing about The Great Unwashed. Remember those cocoa mats I was telling you about? Well, they weren't cocoa mats after all. That was crunched up kibble. Lots of it. Lots and LOTS of it.
Onward.
As some famous dead guy once said "Ships and men rot in port." If he's right, I'd better get back on the road real soon. This weekend I've got a tourette scheduled for Central and Southern California. Then there's a few shows up here in The Bay Area. The beginning of May I head back to The Great Southeast, routing up from a wonderful weekend festival in St Augustine through GA, The Carolinas, VA & DC, playing all the places I didn't get to in February & March.
Friends, if there was ever any doubt, I'm here to dispel it. House concerts are definitely the wave of the present. I was out for 24 working days and did 21 events of different kinds ... venue gigs, guitar clinics and workshops, private lessons and radio appearances, if that's not an oxymoron. But solidly half were house concerts and they were enormous fun for all. Mega-thanks to all the wonderful hosts and all the fine folks who came out to see just what this burgeoning scene is all about. Simply put, it's a party - big or small - with a concert in the middle. It's often very intimate. It frequently happens in a living room or back yard. Occasionally the term "house" gets stretched a tad, and the venue is a storefront or public place. There's often food involved, and sometimes even Adult Beverages. Ovaltine. Absinthe. Geritol in 8-oz slams. You just never know.
Since that Great Southeast Tour is still several weeks out, you'll notice a few holes in my schedule as it stands, particularly as regards The Carolinas and Virginia. There's lots of stuff brewing, but ping me pronto and let's keep up with The Joneses and do a house concert together, eh? I'll be in Greece and Spain in June. I'll be teaching at a music camp in California for a week in July. I'll be in New England the end of July and into August. There's a Midwest / Great Lakes tour brewing for later in the fall, and a couple of Australian buddies are helping me assemble a tour through Oz next March. I am assured that house concerts are Very Happening there as well.
And last but not least, I wanted to update you just a bit on the CD project. It is proceeding apace, but - while not Sgt. Pepper's, by any means - it's revealing itself to be much more a concept piece than the wee fingerstyle album I had originally envisioned. So whatever time The Muses require to complete that process of revelation will be afforded them. Guest artists so far include Kendrick Freeman (Alison Brown) on drums, Sam Bevan (David Grisman, Joe Craven, Matt Flinner) on bass, Mike Phelan (Marley's Ghost) on vocals, Marla Fibish (The Heart Of The Roll) on mandolin, Walter Strauss (Burns Sisters, Mamadou Diabate) on guitar, Joel Tepp (Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat) on clarinet, and lordy, there might well be others, too, before it all gets tied up with a bow and sent to the printers. In the meantime I'll put up some video clips on YouTube and post some downloads on the ol' home page.
Wow. Good thing I didn't promise a short newsletter this time. I hope to see a bunch of you real soon. Things are going real good. The gigs are good. Travel is good. Music is getting written and recorded. Spring has sprung. Easter is past. Peeps have been taken off the shelves, sent back to whatever hell-hole they come from for another whole year. And as you can tell, the coffee here is very good.
Safe travels out there.
- Stevie Coyle
http://www.reverbnation.com/steviecoyle
*Here the author refers to gentlemen who wear Bluetooth headsets anywhere women might see them wearing Bluetooth headsets. He has it on good authority that "It's like putting a stick of mojo kryptonite in your ear." Women apparently do not get hot for that "Borg" look after all ... and come to think of it, any guy who understands that sci-fi reference is already teetering dangerously close to surrendering even any self-ascribed chick-magnet status.
If our email is in your Spam/Junk Folder, please add fanreach@reverbnation.com to your address book.
-Stevie
Coyle
http://www.reverbnation.com/steviecoyle
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